


lest we be monsters

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, I Don't Even Know, Loki Feels, Loki Needs a Hug, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 00:53:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki Laufeyson knew two things with utter conviction. </p><p>He was a monster, and what he had to do must be done alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

 

> Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
> 
> **\- Friedrich Nietzsche**

**  
**Here was a truth: Loki Laufeyson served no one save himself.

***

Six days after Fenrir disappeared from his chains, Loki vanished from his cell. Heimdall could see neither, and this was where all the similarities ended.

Fenrir’s disappearance left empty chains and a broken sword, and a smear of blood on the island where it once stood. Loki left his cell neat and seemingly unused, its door still locked and the windows barred. The guards noticed nothing until the serving lads came to clean away the meals. By all appearances, and for all intents and purposes, the second prince simply disappeared.

It was, in Loki’s humblest opinion, a very quiet affair, any future furor from the Aesir notwithstanding. Then he patted his arse and slipped to another realm, humming a ditty on his way.

Three weeks was peace enough. There was no rest to be had for the wicked, after all.

***

“I’ll find him, father.”

“Bring him home, my son, before someone else does.”

***

The next time Loki saw Thor, it was two months later and he was fighting for his life in Vanaheimr.

He leapt. Left. Right. Back. A twirl of his fingers and the knife flew true. A Chitauri crumbled, knife between its eyes. Fifteen left alive. They besieged him on all sides in no clear formation. The one behind him fired a shot from its stave. He barely dodged, and the beam of energy scalded the left side of his neck.

Pure blinding white on the inside of his skull. His neck burnt. A snarl escaped from his throat, unbidden. The entire situation was hardly _fair_. Not fair, to the holy mother of fucking unfairness.

Funny, how a walk in the woods could turn into a fight for his life. Lady Fate loved him as her personal bitch these days. The next time he saw her, they would have _words_.

His staff swept wide in an arc, and flames burnt through the air. The toon of Chitauri scurried back. They screeched. Witless critters.  The fire caught one before fizzling out. Fourteen left.

Breaths hung heavy in his chest. Weariness and aching soreness twined through his limps. He bled from more wounds than one. He was made of wounds. Everything hurt and nothing was fine. He shifted, slowly, and eyed the circle of creatures. The creatures stood at ready, stave heads pointing at poor little Loki.

How droll. How _familiar_ this situation had became. The third time in as many days, and the numerous battles before that.

Loki licked his lips. Fourteen, fourteen, and how many could he destroy in this state before they get to him? There was a way out of this. There had to be a way out, because he was _Loki_ , not some churlish fool, not that oaf of a man who called himself Th—

 _Thor_.

There was a glint of gold at the peripheral of Loki’s sight. An almost familiar battle roar bellowed and reverberated through the trees. Rattled, the Chitauri swerved as one to face the source, and in their inattention, four fell swiftly.  

Sif. The Warriors Three.

Loki gaped, then winced, shock and relief warring, before firing the flames and taking out another. Ten. Now nine. The clouds rumbled with one man’s discontent. Thor deflected the attack of one with his hammer and struck another. Eight. Seven.

Swiftly, niftily, Loki crept his way behind a tree, then another, and tried to back his way away. Because no, now was not the time to face Thor, to face any of the Aesir. His heart hammered in his throat, and it took effort to stay silent and almost not breathe. Six, five, four. The Aesir worked in tandem. The Chitauri dropped like flies. His… his _enemies_ were now pitted against one another, and there was enough elegance to the situation and Loki almost wanted to laugh.

But no. He could not. Had to get away. Dried autumn leaves crackled beneath his feet, and he prayed it would not be heard. Where next? Álfheimr. Or Svartálfar. The Gems. He had to get to the _Gems_.

Then the world slipped away and he saw only black.

***

The Void taught lessons to those who dared brave its horrors.

For some, knowledge, in exchange for pieces of one’s soul and mind and body and peace of mind and goddamned _self_ , was a worthwhile trade. Others had no choice.

Traversing through the Void dulled some things within the traveller. Happiness. Hope. Desire. Memories. Faith. But the Void sharpened others. Conviction. Belief. Agony.

_I was a monster at heart._

Cycles and cycles of broken memory, they filled him like shattered glass, fragments carving deep into soft flesh. Strange, how the clearest parts were always the worst. Oh, lovely Baldr and gentle Sigyn. Thor, beloved Thor. Ragnorak came and went and came again. His life was a monument to failure, and he was the mother of everything monstrous, and he deserved his lips sewn bloody shut and his heart tightly pinched.

So Loki Skywalker, Loki Liesmith, Loki the Lost traded a bitter sort of despair for magicks lost even to the Royal Libraries of Asgard, and on some days Loki thought it was almost a fair trade. Odin traded an eye for wisdom, and now the lost prince innately, instinctually understood black sorcery that would horrify even Odin.

_I am a monster at heart, and now everyone will see it._

When Thanos plucked Loki from the horrors of the Void, the boy was already half mad. It was almost insultingly easy, afterwards, to mold the other half into a curious sort of complicity.

***

Loki woke to the thrumming of greater power and a dull throb between his temples. The bed beneath him was softer than anything else he had slept on for the past two months, and the sun rose enough to cast a pale light through the window and into his eyes, and there was the faint aroma of healing broths and spiced wine in the air.

He blinked. All memories felt vague in the aftermath of the Void, but this was clearly his chambers in Asgard, gold and green and mostly untouched. So they hadn’t cleared the place out for another noble or two after the traitor fell. Fancy that.

Thor sat, asleep, by the bed. There were no other guards within sight. The cuffs and the collar at his throat, though, were new. He pushed himself up slowly and inspected the cuffs. Dwarven-make, with power-binding runes of the Vanir. Black wisps of power escaped from his fingertips to taste the Vanir magic, and what the blackness touched, it _devoured._

His grimace became a half-cruel smile.  Once upon a time, these could have bound him for years. The Aesir must have still thought it would. Now, it would last only days. He had gained much in his fall. Maybe too much. But even a few days may be too long. Far too long.

 _No realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he cannot find you._ No, no, you don’t have to find me. I’m here. I’m right here for the plucking, and these oafs are the only thing standing between.

He wanted to laugh and laugh until hysterics ripped his throat to shreds. He wanted to cry until salt poisoned and rotted his eyes blind.

Sometime between his attempted flight from the forests of Vanaheimr and now, someone had tended to his wounds. In a bout of morbid curiosity, Loki wondered how deeply his torso had offended the delicate sensitivities of his healer.

Vanity was a thing long since lost in the void, but even still Loki knew he looked almost a _draugar,_ undead, beneath his armor, bloated with the stench of poisoned decay, all jagged wounds and bleeding boils, the new upon the old until there was barely a patch of decent skin.

He was made of wounds. Everything hurt and nothing was fine.

***

Loki Laufeyson knew two things with utter conviction.

He was a monster, and what he had to do must be done _alone_.

***

The next time he opened his eyes, it was high noon and Thor was awake. There was food on the table, but it felt faint and faraway.

“What happened to Fenrir, brother?” Thor asked.

And this is the first thing you ask me? Loki laughed, but did not sit up. His voice rasped with the dryness of thirst, but he did not ask for water. “Should I be grateful for the lack of the muzzle?”

“I am sorry,” Thor whispered. He was stealing looks at Loki’s neck, and pretending to be subtle. Hilarious, really.

For a moment, Loki let Thor wallow in discomfort. As a bit of good fun. _You used to do this_ , his memories whispered, sly things that they were. _Remember the night before the coronation?_

He used to love his not-brother too, and sometimes where the night grew dark, he thought he still did. The Void sharpened convictions. But I am a monster, and this he knew to be truth, and therefore there was nothing to love or be loved.

"How did you find me?"

“Luck, brother. The Norns must have willed it. We looked for you every day these last two months, and only found your blood in Vanaheimr by luck. _Please_ , brother,” Thor said, a whipped puppy afraid to move and afraid to breath and afraid to back away. “Asgard… You left Asgard in an uproar when you escaped. They think Fenrir’s disappearance is your working. Father bade me to find out the truth before—before—”

“Before they string me up a tree to bleed like an eagle?” Loki mused, then giggled. “Wouldn’t that be a sight for you?”

“ _Brother_!”

“I am not your brother, Thor.” The words were light admonishments on his tongue. Like sugar-frosted truth, sweet and a relief to speak. The words did not say _you are not my brother_. The words said _I am not yours_. I must not be yours.

Because what he had to do, had to be done alone.  

“Tell me,” Loki said, almost drained. “What does the Allfather plan to do with his wayward tool? Beheading? Quartering? Poison in my eyes? Or something more mundane? Another thousand years on top of my current sentence?”

The look on Thor’s face! Disbelief and horror and disgust and aghast. A fine look to use when faced with a villain.

“You are my brother and you are his _son_. Do not forget it. Father will see you in audience tomorrow.”

Wasn’t that kind? He had another night to recover, at least. His throat throbbed with thirst, and the first pangs of hunger made themselves known, but Loki asked for nothing.

“Leave, Thor. I require sleep.” He turned his face away. “I had nothing to do with Fenrir.”

A lie, of course.

***

When he slept, the black wisps of power devoured Vanir magic.


	2. Chapter 2

The price for his crimes upon Midgard, and Asgard before that was a thousand years spent in a sealed cage beneath the earth of Odin’s throne. It seemed a small thing to pay, and he hadn’t even been disowned.

***

There were comforts to be had in admitting one’s own monstrosity.

For once, he knew exactly what he was— _ugly monstrous frozen blue—_ and exactly where he stood— _at Thor’s feet, at Odin’s feet, a stolen relic, nothing more_ \--. No more shame. No more despair while faintly clawing to be _better better better_ and good enough for the Allfather’s table.

The war on Midgard was his idea, entirely. Broken and shivering at Thanos’ feet, barely grasping at straws for the slightest morsel of long-lost pride, and the first thing out of his lips were _war_ , _glorious war_. The old Thor would have been proud. Odin had loved the old Thor as much as the Allfather loved the new one.

War, glorious war, for the promise of a pretty blue cube—Thanos wanted the Tesseract, but Loki cared not. _I am a monster._ Monsters were wont to destruction for destruction’s sake. This was reason enough.

He said as much during the farce of a trial when Thor first dragged him back to Asgard by the scuff of the neck. Odin aged with guilt, and Loki laughed the night away. Thor was horrified.

_You lack conviction_ , a mortal once said. But Loki had nothing but conviction. Rule Midgard? Not the priority.

Here was a truth: Loki Laufeyson served no one save himself. In the aftermath of the debacle in Midgard, Loki Laufeyson _knew_ himself a monster, irrevocably and wholly, and learnt to embrace it utterly. It was a relief to simply be. Thanos still did not have his pretty blue cube. There would be no regrets, no apologies, nothing but bared fangs and empty defiance traipsing at the edge of an unwelcoming tomorrow.

Thor once asked: _Who controls the would-be King?_

Nobody controlled the never-be King. He volunteered. Midgardians would call it _finding himself_. Some mortals, like Stark, would call it fucking hilarious.

***

Here was another truth: Loki Laufeyson had always been one unforgiving sonuvabitch.

***

When Thor came next, it was to summon— _push pull drag_ —the chained and collared Loki for judgement before Odin’s throne. Again. How nostalgic. He had played the chained criminal often enough within enough lifetimes that walking like a chained beast down these halls felt almost normal.

The natural state of villainy, perhaps, was at the feet of the goodly heroes.

“Have care in how you speak to Father, Loki,” Thor said at the doorway, leaving Loki with the common guards. The crown prince had to take his place first. Loki gave a mocking bow and stayed silent after Thor’s departing back.

When Loki strode into the hall minutes later, it was to the cold stares of the courtiers and the lords, the warriors and the maidens. He discomforted most, disgusted some, and bewildered others. There were few who held him in true, abject fear, and these were the wise ones he took note of.

Odin called it an audience, but Loki knew better. It had always been a show and his showmanship had to be learnt somewhere. Look, good men and women, at the wayward Prince! Look how it pranced in chains! That Frigga Allmother was not in attendance was small mercy, indeed.

So if the bow he swept in front of Odin’s throne was comically theatrical and bitingly insulting, it was expected of Loki the Trickster, Loki the Coward, Loki the Jester Price with a hollow crown. There were a small burst of outrage from Tyr and his merry band, but they were quaint enough to be ignored.

“Allfather,” he said, drawled, bleeding arrogance and rudeness, and looked on expectantly.

Thor shot him a look. _Have care_ , it said. Loki batted his lashes and looked away. No, no, I will have none.

Upon his dais and throne, Odin Allfather still made for a fearsome figure, golden glory glaring with the fury of burning suns. But to some, to those who had spent a lifetime with both man and King, the crevices around his eyes and the stiff set of his mouth spoke only of age and weariness and sorrow deep.

Thrice Gungnir struck against the golden dais to call for silence. “Loki,” the Allfather said. “Loki _Odinson_. You have violated your sentence.”

No, no, not an Odinson. He bared his teeth. “So what of it?”  

There were two types of criminals to pass these chambers—Loki, and everyone else. Only one would have the audacity to speak to the King thus.

The pause stretched uncomfortably before Gungnir clunked. “Then where have you secreted Fenrir?”

“I know not where Fenrir is, Allfather,” Loki said, stretching his hands out, palm up, feigning innocence. Mirth danced in his voice.

Whispers swept through the hall. The quiet hum of slowly building tension bounced off silvery gold walls. Warriors muttered to each other and maidens whispered behind their handkerchiefs. _Lies_ , they whispered uncomfortably. There were few within these halls who could forget the circumstances of the wolf-beasts’ birth and captivity, and fewer still who could forget what Fenrir meant to Loki and Loki to Fenrir.

It seemed almost cruel, to force a father bind his child. Yet, another word lucked in the mind of the masses. _Ragnorak_.

Cruel choices, to be made by cruel Kings, for Kings could not always be kind. So the Allfather drew himself up, and seemed to have lost a millennia of age in a moment. “The _truth_ , Loki. I will have the truth, boy.”

“The truth?” And the wicked smirk upon Loki’s lips twisted into a wretched, jagged, scar. His laughter had never sounded more like chalk on cracked edges. Somewhere, Thor grimaced. “The truth is _I can find him_ , blood of my blood, seed of my loins, if you bind me to the task, Allfather.

He could not say, _yes, yes, I know where that miserable creature is, miserable like his father,_ because perhaps he did but perhaps he did not, and sometimes the truth was a flip of the coin, a breathe in the fog.

“Then by the will of Odin,” the Allfather thundered, and power rolled off his throne in waves, “And by the cuffs you wear, the collar you wear, I bind you, Loki Odinson, to this task. You will find Fenrir. You will bring him back to Asgard. Thor shall go with you. And when you come back, this current trespass will be forgiven, and you will serve the rest of your sentence. I _decree_ it thus.”

And this was the end of this.

***

There was an echo of the Void within the Tesseract, enough that Loki could not bear to touch it once he had it.

The Tesseract was a fickle and whimsical thing, older than Odin, strange in its ways. It promised. It showed. It cajoled. It warped. It was not meant for the hands of mortal man, of any being who lived linearly in three-dimensional folds. It was to a cube as a cube would be to a square—similar, but something _more._

Loki touched the Cosmic Cube once on Midgard before handing it to the Doctor and the Hawk. It showed him the Infinity Gems. 


	3. Chapter 3

The quest was decreed, and all preparations for it was made with due haste. Packs were packed by the menservants, and they were to set out within the day. Loki made no secret of his eagerness to leave.

“We shall depart as soon as Sif and the Warriors Three join us,” Thor promised when he took over reins from the guards outside Odin’s halls. “We will wait at the stables.”

So they walked to the stables, and they walked an arm’s width apart. Once upon a time, the golden prince would have slung his arm around his darker sibling’s shoulder, and as they walked, there would have been quips and jests and laughter. But the past year had been cruel, and the wall erected between the two now was a hard thing to crack, for it was lined with briar thorns and many winters’ seeping cold, and each small crevice seeped of icy, cruel thoughts.

“I thought you had nothing to do with Fenrir,” Thor said, finally, when they stood in front of Sleipnir’s stall.

“I cannot tell you where he is,” Loki said, facing Odin’s steed and his once-upon son. But _I cannot_ was not the same as _I know not_ , and what was said was worth as much as what went unspoken. “But he is my blood, and I can find him.”                               

Blood had little to do with it beyond use as an anchor in a locating spell or two, but he was not about to let Thor know that. Nor was he, quite honestly, prepared to perform one. Yet Thor seemed content with the answer, the trusting fool that he was. Loki turned to hide a brittle smile, and Sleipnir neighed softly and licked his fingers.

“He remembers you still, brother.” Thor said, stepping closer.

It was an unwelcomed promiscuity; Loki’s back stiffened, and he pushed himself closer to his son and further from the not-brother. Sleipnir rested its head upon its mother’s shoulders as Loki stroked its mane.

“Of course,” Loki scoffed. “I doubt you would comprehend motherhood, Odinson. Blood calls to blood.”

One thing went unobserved by Thor the Thunderer: thin tendrils of power escaped from Loki’s fingertips and curled their way deep into Sleipnir’s mane, sinking and settling marrow-deep. Softly, soothingly, Slepnir’s eyes closed and breaths slowed, and swayed on its feet.

“Our packs, brother.” Thor said when the things came, handing one of the leather sacks to Loki, and waving the menservants away. They bowed and ducked their away, sneaking peeks at the black prince.

Loki nodded, leaving the sack to fall upon the ground. He pulled his hands away from Sleipnir, and it drew a startled neigh. “Hush, my son,” whispered the mother to the child. “I will come for you again.”

When Loki pulled away again, his child did not cry, and that was a small solace to be had. And if there was something choking up his own throat, it would be blamed on the collar that fitted too tightly upon his throat.

His collar. Ha. A finger reached up to touch the thing, ignoring the mild buzz of warning that jolted his neck. Thor eyed him apologetically, but Loki stayed cold. His collar’s powers were fading, its magic devoured slowly but steadily, and in another hour or two it would become simple décor.

He had learned much in the abyss that was the Void.

“I’m afraid father has the key to that,” Thor said, an apology issued on the behalf of someone else.

_I know,_ Loki thought, but did not speak. _An hour or two,_ he reminded himself, his fingers flexing. It seemed a strange day indeed, when Thor spoke more than Loki Silvertongue did. Silver tongue rotted and turned to lead. Loki smiled at the humour of it.

“I see our friends. Come, brother. Let us saddle the horses before they arrive, and we shall ride to the Bifrost together.”

_Your friends_ , Loki thought as he nodded.

***

The short ride was uncomfortable.

Thor rode ahead with Sif beside him, and they murmured a quiet conversation. The Warriors Three flunked Loki, keeping watch over the wayward Prince. Loki himself made for another row, singular and alone, as he was wont to do. Other than the quiet murmurings from ahead, the rest of the group were silent.

They made their way past the busy afternoon markets, and where Loki was recognized, a tense nervousness would descend upon the people. The brave ones pointed and sneered. The timid ones turned their faces away. The songs of his deeds had spread widely, and all the bards had sung of the second prince at least once.

So Loki sat with a ramrod back, chin held high and lips pressed tight. _This is what I wanted_ ; he told himself, stilling his own wicked heart. _They see me now, more than they see Thor_. And if the price of this recognition was his name and his life torn from his grasp  while he gasped like a mewling kit, then so be it, and he would be a steel wrought wall of iron-crafted convictions because there was more here, more at stake now, then simply a good name.

The loped-sided smirk that twisted across his face brought no one comfort.

They reached the city walls and continued towards Heimdall at too slow a pace, and discomfort rolled off Fandral most visibly. Loki could feel the man’s eyes drilling into his back. It was a quaint feeling. But in some ways, the slow pace was necessary, was good, and was a stroke of luck within this luckless land.

His cuffs loosened against flesh, and the collar was no longer so tight. Almost unseen, black tendrils of power ate at the embedded Vanir magic.

When they had at last arrived, the group slipped off their horses and trusted the beasts to be collected later. Heimdall gazed at them impassively, and Thor glanced at his brother.

“Where shall we go, Loki?”

A moment of hesitation earned a sharp glance from Sif. “Midgard,” he said. “We go to Midgard.”

***

Many were the ways to travel between Realms, and Bifrost was but one of them. The simplest and safest of the ways, but it was not the only.

If the Bifrost was a well trodden path, then the shadowed ways between the reams were barely marked, barely seen things, well fraught with dangers that hunted and haunted, and travellers were more prone to falling off than travelling on.

Falling off was an ill-advised fate. Loki would know. He had fallen once.

The shadowed ways were the domain of the mages and the magicians, magic imbued in the pathways’ very essence. For those who could not bend the greater powers into a cloak of protection, the shadowed ways promised an eternity lost in nothingness.

Someone who had travelled a lifetime through the twisted secret pathways between the worlds would, however, learn that there were ways to slip onto the shadowed paths whilst on a journey through the Bifrost. It was a simple matter of _bending_ the non-Euclidean geometry with a trickle of power, and taking a step to one side.

Simple, really.

The Odinson was making this too easy. With an illusion to replace himself until the fools reach Midgard, Thor and his merry band would not even notice until much too late.

Odin’s decree bounded Loki Odinson to a quest. It was a shame that no one thought to remind the old King that Loki was no Odinson.

***

Loki landed gracelessly, falling on his knees into the snow-covered ice of Jötunheimr’s southern-most isles. His hands froze with a bitter bite as he pushed himself up to stand.

Mountain ranges towered above, and before them he was a minutiae thing. Before him, carved into the very walls of the mountain itself, were bronze doors that span six times his arms’ width, and were three times taller than even Thor. The doors themselves were inscribed with runes of power, and frozen vines decorated the edges and sides.

Strange, how even monsters could produce majestic works.

Without preamble, Loki stepped forward and knocked.


End file.
